


Restless

by amathela



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-02
Updated: 2009-07-02
Packaged: 2017-10-08 08:26:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amathela/pseuds/amathela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>A few days after the Cylons attack, everything starts to blur a little at the edges.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Restless

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers up to episode _1:1 - 33,_ plus a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to episode _4:20 - Daybreak._

A few days after the Cylons attack, everything starts to blur a little at the edges. It's not just the sleep deprivation, though that's enough to do it; it's the stims he's been swallowing dry just to stay awake, the breakdown of their schedules into thirty-three minute increments. After a day or two, he doesn't even need to look at that damn clock to hear it ticking in his head, to feel every moment passing, but he does it anyway, like some kind of twisted ritual. _Galactica_ is old, some of its equipment even older, but none of the clocks ever break down; they keep going, unrelenting, recording each inexorable shift of one minute to the next.

If the Cylons' only goal here is to frak with their heads until they give up and lay down the fight, it's not actually a bad manoeuvre.

It makes it difficult to stick to any semblance of normality. To follow rules. Sometimes, Lee has no idea what the rules even are any more, and he's not entirely sure if that's because they're all suddenly on the run for their lives, or because his father's idea of running a battlestar seems to consist of pretending they're all one big happy family until someone fraks up. Regardless, he's pretty sure he's breaking half a dozen of them right now, and he doesn't quite know if it's a choice he made somewhere along the way, or if he's just too tired to care.

An hour ago - no, sixty-six minutes ago - Sharon Valerii was engaged in a shouting match in the middle of the deck with the guy she's still pretending to be frakking in secret. Thirty-three minutes ago, she was sitting sullenly in the ready room as Lee gave her a handful of pills she didn't really look like she needed. Now, she's palming the front of his pants while he pushes her flight suit back off her shoulders, murmuring nothing of consequence into her neck.

She's pressed against the wall of some forgotten storage room, half-filled with boxes intended for the museum. It's twelve minutes since their last jump, twenty-one until the next, time he knows he should be spending showering or sleeping or attending to some trivial duty that's bound to demand his attention. Five minutes since he pulled her in here with him, intending to give her some time to cool off, maybe give her a lecture on improper conduct; instead, it had devolved into an argument that led to -

Well, he's not sure what to call this, exactly, other than a spectacularly bad idea. Whatever it is, it also feels like the first thing he's done in days that hasn't been predicated entirely on his immediate survival.

It's a surprisingly good feeling.

The clock in his head ticks down the seconds as he pulls down her flight suit, slides his hand beneath her tanks. He grazes the skin up to her breasts, her nipples standing out hard beneath the fabric of her bra, and feels her shiver against him, arching her body closer. Her hands move up the front of his pants, fumbling at his zipper distractedly, and he squeezes gently, eliciting a sharp intake of breath that's far from silent in the confined quarters.

Nineteen minutes until their next jump. He helps her with the zipper, freeing her hands to tangle in his hair, grip his shoulders, and he tugs his pants down until they settle loosely around his ankles. Eighteen.

"Frak," he says, as he slides a hand beneath the elastic of her underwear. For a moment, it almost drowns out the incessant ticking in his head.

Boomer laughs into his neck, breathless, a little uncertain. "That's the point."

No, he thinks. _Frak._ He wonders if saying it out loud was supposed to be some sort of trigger, to pull him back to the real world where he cares about rules and regulations, about improper conduct and not frakking another man's girlfriend. (That's almost funny, but he doesn't stop to think about it.) It didn't work, and her breath on his neck sends a shiver straight down his spine, asserting authority over moral scruples and military code.

Seventeen minutes.

After an impossibly long minute (forty-seven seconds), _frak_ turns into _frak it,_ and he curls a finger up inside her, feeling her gasp almost before he hears it. He leans into her, trailing careless kisses down her neck and shoulder; there's an acrid taste to her skin, the buildup of sweat there's never time to properly erase, but she smells clean beneath it, the lingering scent of citrusy soap that hasn't yet become a long-forgotten memory.

His hands leave her, feeling the absence of warm skin, and then he's inside her, letting out a low grunt of effort as he steadies himself, bracing a hand against the wall. He moves slowly at first, letting himself adjust, and his other hand circles her waist, resting lightly on her hip, skimming along her side. His own breathing sounds loud in his ears, rough and uneven, and he adjusts his pace to match hers, moving faster until he can't tell the difference between the pace of his thrusts and the ticking clock.

"Eight," he says as she clenches tightly around him; low, guttural, barely a word. His hand glides across her skin, slick with sweat, pressing flat against the heat of her spine. When he comes, the clock slows for a moment, speeds up again as he collapses heavy against her.

Six minutes until they jump. Maybe seven. He doesn't know, any more, and it's a welcome relief.

"Frak," she says, and he can't tell if it's an expression of satisfaction, or of regret, or just something to fill the empty silence around them. She breathes out, and runs a finger along his where they're still pressed into her skin; her touch is warm, familiar, more absent than affectionate.

"Yeah," he says, in a voice barely above a whisper. As soon as he's managed to get his breathing under control, he takes half a step back, his feet scraping across the metal floor. He tugs his pants back up, adjusts his uniform, and glances at Boomer, who's doing the same.

"I didn't mean for that to happen," he says. It isn't an apology, and he smiles in a way that's equal parts embarrassment and shared intimacy.

"Neither did I," she says. Hers isn't an apology, either, and she matches his smile with just a shade more detachment, looking him square in the eye.

"Right," he says, and really, he's never been good at this part. "We'd better get out there."

"Wouldn't want to miss it," she agrees dryly.

He looks down at his feet, and then back up at her; she's watching him with a wary kind of amusement, and instead of making him feel on edge, it settles into him with something like comfort. None of this is in the rules, but maybe there's an extra set somewhere, one that tells you how you're supposed to live once everything worth living for is gone.

He figures that blurring things a little at the edges is probably a good start.

He steps out into the corridor, and Boomer waits a minute before she follows him. Nobody seems to notice. He catches her eye as he turns to leave, and she smiles, almost imperceptibly, her expression barely hinting at some shared confidence.

"Good hunting," she says.

He nods, trying to keep his thoughts clear of everything he's managed, if only for a moment, to forget. "Good hunting."

When he gets to the ready room, he looks up at the clock, and lets it count down the seconds.


End file.
